“The guy in the pineapple?” she said. “Yeah, I know him. Of him.”
We were back in the trailer of Serenity Lane, a neighbor not far off to the south. Marsha “Pink” Krakow ran out of cereal and was going door to door to see if anyone had a box of something — anything — to lend her this morning, being the addict she was. Serenity was first on the list, since she was the only green dot around. So maybe last on the list too. Marsha found it to be a very successful visit in more ways than one. Before she left with the box Serenity said she could even keep and that she was an addict herself in that department and that she already had one box of that particular brand so have at it, Marsha decided to stay put for a while and talk to the affable avatar of 16 years, old even for this area.
“How’s the 3-n-1 going?” Serenity started the post-cereal procurement conversation after laying down on the bed in what Marsha thought was a bit of a provocative pose. Is Serenity gay? she couldn’t help thinking. *No*, Marsha. Get your head out of the gutter for a change! She’s just a potential *friend*, which you need desperately (she kept thinking).
“Oh, it’s fine. I’ve found a boyfriend or decided on a boyfriend I guess is a better way to put it. Eddie D’Aigle, from even down south of you here. In Soggy Bottom, near the bottom of Big Sandy. I suppose at one time it was even soggy,” she tried to joke.
“Hmm,” she said. “Do you know Fred down there, then? Fred Mercury. Came to the sand and the sea to help his complexion.”
“I… don’t think so.”
“Anyway, you were telling me about the 3-n-1; how it’s going.”
“Great. Like I said, I have Edward–”
“So you’re dealing with the other two within. Who was it — Shelley of course, my cousin, or who *use* to be my cousin.”
“Still is,” Marsha “Pink” Krakow reinforced. “She’s still in there.” Marsha didn’t add that she just “escaped” last night and went on a bit of a wild spree, Brown in tow. “And Brown,” Marsha remembered to add.
“The… gasper, you described her. The 3rd. Gesturer. But not Jester,” Serenity attempted her own weak joke. They were getting along swell, Marsha thought here. A potential friend indeed.
“Right. The 3rd.”
I’m trying to remember when and how Marsha brought up Spongebub and the crop circles. Probably when she revealed what she was writing about to Serenity as they got even closer, but *not* one on top of the other. Yes, let’s go with that.
“So I sat back and looked at what I just wrote — trying to do it in the style of Shelley, you understand.”
“I understand.” Serenity had had her own big bowl of Kellogg’s Woot Loops about a 1/2 hour back, just before Marsha showed up. So she was happy to keep talking. Marsha, however, found her stomach starting to rumble. She didn’t have much longer before she needed to leave. Better be quick about it. Thus the talk about the writing, the core of the mystery, she felt. If Serenity understood this, then she checked off the biggest box in the friend application process.
“Bone to spaceship, obvious reference to 2001. Which made me start thinking about men.”
“Sure it did,” Serenity attempted to quip about the bone part.
“No, 2 men.”
“Even better!”
“*No* (huff!). It was an Apeman and then a Spaceman. I knew this to be true. Past and future combined into something not quite as good as either separately. But that wasn’t all. There were 2 other men on either side. I suppose I would be in the center, watching it all, as on a television show. Do… do you know of Spongebub, the square little fellow who lives under the water with mates Starr and Squid?”
And this is where we came in.
Sunklands 